I've heard that there's a house that has some bodies in the basement.
Somebody told you that Shakaia was a victim of human trafficking.
I'm come to find out. This is like it exploded into this huge thing.
I knew, I just knew something was wrong.
Police say thirty three year old Jared Bride Again was shot dead.
I kept calling his phone during the drive.
Gunned down in front of his two year old daughter.
It's a murder of the stun Jack Speach neighbors.
His murder has attracted national attention, with the investigators saying he was targeted.
Eventually a police officer answered and told me to come to the police station.
Justice is something that takes different shapes or forms.
If you know something, heard something, please it's never too late to.
Do the right thing.
So I'm Dana Thompson aka Body Movin, and.
I'm John Green. For about a decade, Deanna and I spent a lot of time on the Internet, especially in the underbelly of the Internet, trying to identify and get animal abusers arrested.
We spent countless hours scouring the dark web helping catch predators. We spent over a year and a half trying to get law enforcement to take us seriously about a man that was killing cats online and he was threatening to move on to kill humans. And that was Luca mcnatta.
Yeah, you might have heard about the Netflix special called Don't Fuck with Cats.
That's us. Well, now we're turning our online investigator skills to some of the most unexplained, unsolved, and just ignored cases.
This is True Crimes, the production of iHeartRadio and Katie's Studios.
Camera. Yeah, it's Deanna. How are you, darling.
I'm doing good, so good to hear from you.
I really don't talk to too many people about Chikai because I get scared, you know, I don't.
I get worried.
Because when I found when they told me she was a victim of human trafficking, they gave me a list of names, and I was shocked because these people I watched me cry, you know, so I didn't know who I couldn't trust.
So somebody told you that Chicaia was a victim of human trafficking.
Yeah.
Back in January of twenty twenty, the detective called me in and asked me if I would tell KaiA thing all over again. So I did, and he said, I have somebody that wants to talk to you want to talk to him? I said, yeah, let's talk to anybody.
And so this guy.
Madgin know, I cannot even remember his name because I was like, my my mom blake when they told me that he came in here and he told me, he said, you were talked about a couple of people of interest. He said that was JJ Johnson and Tommy Medicine out. And so he told me he said, Chicai is a victim of human traffick king.
This was somebody in law enforcement, a detective or an FBI agent.
He was a human traffick king investigator for the Yellowstoam County. My my mom blank because that when he gave me the list of names, I was like, I was shocked.
I felt so betrayed. What was the list of names? Like in like in reference to like what they say? The list of names?
Was like, yeah, yeah, what I can send you that?
This the names they gave me.
It was crazy.
I was shocked, like, why would they even give me this listen name?
Why would they give that to you?
Yeah?
Because I'm my first song. So I called my friend and Charlotte, I said, because I would lay here and plot how I was going to get to these guys and make them, you know. And so finally I said, well I need to get out of her start you know, some of these some of these thoughts.
Later, we spoke with our producer Jeff Shane about this new information and he had.
Some news too.
So I have a bit of yeah, a bit of an update. So I was messaging with Tamara Kaia's mom last night on Facebook and was asking if she could send us those lists of names that she said she had, and right away sent them over. I'm going to send them to you guys. I'm going to text you them now.
That's okay, yeah, right, I.
Gotta pick Oh, okay, it's a picture. Oh she Oh, it's a picture of the list.
So this was something she said that the law enforcement gave her she did. This is not her handwriting, this is law enforcements handwriting.
Really, there's a lot of females on this list. Interesting. Oh oh my god. The second picture Romelo big Day. Oh wow, I'm surprised to see his name on there.
That's so we're looking at a piece of paper with I don't know fifteen to twenty different names written on here. And obviously Deanna and I are looking for people that we thought were somehow associated with or had something to do with Zakai's disappearance, and one of those names is on here. The name that I thought would be on here isn't. That's the one that gets that's.
You know, well, are you talking about Rico?
Yeah?
I too noticed that Rico's name was not on this list. So I asked Samara about Rico, and she said that the investigator who wrote this list told her that these were people who were recruiting girls for Rica.
This is Rico's list. Are you kidding me?
This is like, these are Rico's people.
Yeah.
So Rico's like the head honcho and these are heads henchmen.
Wow, he's got a lot of people out in the streets doing his work for him.
Okay, that's surprising. I mean, I knew Ramelo was like a subservient to Rico in some fashion, but I wasn't sure what exactly the connection was.
So again, this is the list that somebody in law enforcement provided Sakaia's family, saying that these people were out recruiting girls on the street and doing it for Rico. Wow, this is a long list.
Okay, well, this is great when you say this was written by law enforcement and provided, you know, like to Tamara, it's like literally in black and white now right, It's it's totally tangible. And seeing Ramelo's name on this list gaves me chills because I looked at him so hard, you know what I mean? I looked at him so hard.
And I'm sure and I'm sure a lot of these are probably social media names that if you were to go to Romelo Big Days, you would find that person as a friend.
That's what I want to do. I want to get these in a matrix of of what of something, a matrix of sorts, and go through social media see if I can tie any of them together. Right wow?
Yeah.
Unfortunately Ramelo has like thirty six Facebook pages, so you know that's gonna take some time.
Is he still in custody?
He was released, okay, but he had another he had another assault. I know exactly what it feels like to have somebody missing from the family and having the birthday cakes with them not there, and the tears and the heartache and just like the whole Before I was born, my cousin was abducted from my aunt's front yard, and you know, after I was born and growing up, we would always talk about him and I never excuse me. It was a constant theme growing up, Like we would
have like birthday cakes with his name on it. You know. It was like, where is he in my family?
Dude?
My family in Michigan were super close, like we did everything together. My mom had five sisters and they all had like a lot of kids, and we would all get together Birthdays, Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving. I mean it was huge, and there was always that one person missing. So it was a constant reminder that he's not there. I never really understood. When I got older enough to understand, I learned that he was abducted. When he was one years old.
My aunt called the police and my aunt explained to police, you know, like my son's missing. He's only a baby, and this is like the sixties, all right, kids at one years old were sitting in the front yard by themselves. It's just the way it was, right. They were like, well, where's your wor the dad and she was like, we've been divorced, you know for six months, eight months whatever it was. And the cops at the time were like,
he probably has them, don't worry about it. And that's how things were back then, and like there was no FBI task force for missing children to go to other states, you know, things like that. The cops were just like, yeah, whatever. I remember being such a young such a young kid, going what probably like eight, and my mom was explaining it to me, and I even back then, I was like, what do you mean, what do you mean? They said, don't worry about it, what do you mean? Where is he?
And when when I was I want to say, twenty, he reached out to her. Oh my god, my cousin called my aunt hit the ex took him to California, and when he died, my cousin finally got information about his mom and reunited. But yeah, the ex, but we didn't know for sure. My whole life, we didn't know where he was. It was always a thought that yeah, maybe maybe he's with his dad, but we never knew for sure. So from like a really early age, I had like this problem with systematic injustice that let's say,
I don't know how to say it. I didn't get it and I still don't to this day. I really don't get it. Because of my own personal background and because I've been growing as a person. One of my biggest things is crimes against marginalized communities. In Chicaia's case really pains me. As we wait for the DNA paperwork to come back from Chicaia's parents, we wanted to jump into more about the horrific legal hurdles Native Americans, especially Native American women face.
Chakaia was a member of the Cheyenne Reservation, which is located just outside of Billings, Montana, which was where she was living when she disappeared. This is significant because Native American reservations are sovereign territories. They are not governed by state laws or police by local state police. This means they have their own tribal police who handle reservation matters.
But often those departments have limited budgets and are understaffed, and when a major crime is committed, like a murder or a rape, the FBI is supposed to assist.
In Chicaia's case, even though she's a reservation member, she went missing from the city of Billings, which means the local police are tasked to handle her case and try and find this missing person. However, it becomes complicated because families often report their loved ones or missing persons to multiple departments, and cases get handed around from one department to another. Who investigates what and who can arrest who? Is a jurisdictional nightmare. We found out and.
From what we hear, the system is very broken. Native American and Indigenous families don't trust law enforcement, and law enforcement doesn't feel like they are even being given enough information to understand all the complexities of this problem. Our producer Jeff Shane, spoke to FBI analyst Don Metzmyer. He is one of the only law enforcement officers who would talk to us on or off the record.
Don works as an intelligence at list out of New Mexico. He's tasked with working on missing and Murdered Indigenous women cases or MMIW in a state in an effort to help find answers to family members. While he hasn't worked directly on Chicaia's case, he's familiar with her story and provided us with the context of this whole jurisdictional issue nightmare.
Hey, Don, thank you so much for taking the time. We're trying to get in communication with Yellowstone County, for example, which is the department who's handling Chicaia's case, and it's been very challenging to get them to give any sort of even just we're working on this case statement. So explain to me that why you are kind of bucking that trend and being more transparent with things like the media, podcast, TV, et cetera.
Great questions, I would argue, from what the work that we do here, it's not really a trend that we need to that we're bucking, like what we're doing here in New Mexico, because we've always worked very closely with the media. One of the things that I see here on this topic compared to the previous work I've done with other areas of focus for the FBI is this topic,
we are very reliant on the public's help. And what I mean by that is, let's say it's a national security matter or a cyber matter or something like that, We've got a lot of great databases that we can use to do that research. On something like a missing person's case, which for the most part, the FBI doesn't investigate missing person cases except for in rare circumstances where we believe fu play is involved and we've got overwhelming evidence.
So that's usually the local law enforcement, and you mentioned like the departments in Yellowstone, so historically we haven't done we don't do those sorts of investigations, and we don't in New Mexico either. However, we do provide assistance to
local law enforcement. So still breaking down that, the beginning part of that is we are reliant on the public when someone goes missing, and on this issue for missing persons, we're back to the public, and the best way that we can use that database, which in this case I'm considering the public to be a database, is to put
that in out to the public. Something I often say is there's a reason that the FBI still has a ten most Wanted list, even with all the databases we have, is we're relying on that public to see those tips, to know that we care about a topic, and then to give them a path forward of how to report
that information to the public. I don't know specifically about Yellowstone, but I do know from our close work on this issue with our local law enforcement, there's an epidemic of missing persons across all races and genders in the US, and so one of our closest partners, the Albuquerque Police Department,
Those detectives are settled with a huge caseload. I feel sympathetic from their perspective of how much work they have, and that's why we've gone out of our way here to provide them additional tools and support in those cases. And if we have information within our own holdings, as we'd like to call it our own FBI information, we share that with them so that we're looking at the same thing to try to find a resolution to a case.
I'm trying not to give you a non answer to that, but does that help kind of clarify?
It does?
Yeah, it does.
I don't want to use the word bucking the trend because I don't want to sound like we we decided here that we're going to stop hiding from the public.
It's just we're trying to provide a path forward for us to work with the public a little easier, and that we often refer to it as radical transparency or just we just put all the information out there so that there sometimes seems to be like you mentioned, like maybe the frustrations of the family with local law enforcement to just share what we have.
Do you find that there is a frustration or a mistrust from you know, these victims' families, specifically in the indigenous communities, with law enforcement or with you know some you know with officials.
Short answer is yes. And now it's hard to sometimes understand that frustration because is that the frustration of a missing a family member who has lost someone. I've got a child, and if my child went missing, my first probably primal reaction would be frustration. I I want to know everything that's going on with that case, and sometimes from a law enforcement perspective, and I've spoke to some
of my tribal colleagues on this. They're cut in a really bad position because they are one members of the tribe that are doing the investigation, but they still are law enforcement members and they have to do preservation of evidence, protecting their sources sometimes of information. So I am we're
very sympathetic with the families that are frustrated. That frustration is their motivation to try to find answers to what happened to their loved one, and we want them to hold us and they should also have a right to hold law enforcement accountable to find out what's going on with their case.
Okay, So that brings me to my next point, which is, like the jurisdictional issues of it all. Are you able to just I mean, we've heard it from so many different people, but I feel like you're hearing to give me an answer. Explain the jurisdictional issues as it stays sure with where you fit into, you know, like as you were saying, tribal police, local place all that.
It wouldn't surprise me if you've heard from victims' families and even from some maybe tribal law enforcement are there
does have the appearance of jurisdictional issues. If you look at a map of Native American land, it's honestly called a checkerboard, and because it depends on where you are with a you'd have to have a GPS to know whether you're standing on tribal land or whether you're not standing on tribal land, and who has that authority when you're on it, whether it's the US Attorney's office or
whether it's the state Attorney General's office. So yeah, that jurisdictional issue will always occur, but we have to in law enforcement have to try to come up with solutions to try to get over maybe a map that was made one hundred and thirty one hundred and seventy years ago. Sometimes it's hard. It's hard to work because it's more work on an overburdened office or an overburdened agency. But if you're the family member, you often want one single point of contact that you can talk to.
So can I just ask, like, let's put it into you know, because we talk a lot about Shokaia on this podcast. Sure, So for her, she's a woman from a reservation. She's from the Northern Reservation in Montana, but she is living in the city of Billings and goes missing from the city of Billings, correct, and so they gets reported to the Billings PDA, gets passed off to Yellowstone County. The family claims that the FBI was supposed to step in and offer assistance, but that might have happened,
it might not have happened. They're not sure. What is your take on the proper proto call for who should be handling this investigation.
So I can't speak to Shicaia's case specifically because that happened outside of our jurisdiction, but I would like to discuss how that would be handled if it happened within the state of New Mexico. So if an individual went missing, here a Native American within the city of Albuquerque. There are multiple entities that could have lead on that missing person's case. That could be the City of Alququerque Police department, that could be the Bernalleeo County Sheriff's Department, or even
the state police. And in all of those instances, they would have the lead, and we have the right if they came to us to offer assistance. So from our internal side, we would open up a parallel police assistance investigation. Again, we don't have the lead on it. We are just using some of the resources, whether it's our evidence response team, whether it's our poligraphers, whether it's our behavioral analysis units, what they need to help come to resolution on that case.
Why do you think the numbers are so high for the Indigenous community in terms of homicide and missing people?
What I will say is sometimes in Native American communities across the country, high rates of violence that occur, often these departments to give them some defense. They're often underfunded, underserved, and they don't have the technology, so they don't have intelligence analysts. Sometimes it might be a two, four or a six person department responsible for covering hundreds, if not thousands, of square miles. Each of the names on these lists represent a point of pain. I will say for New
Mexico because that's what I can speak to. I like the way we're handling this. I am supported. It is an intelligence based support the operations, which we would call operations the investigators, whether it's local law enforcement or that. But we're giving them the tools. Other states are not there. So I think each state on this very complex issue nationally,
has different things that they can offer. I think New Mexico was kind of the right environment at the right time between all those things I mentioned earlier, where you had an office that was willing to put a lot of analysts and take them off their day work with the other stuff I was doing to try to tackle
a very difficult crisis with big data. And other states have different populations in different issues, and that's where it is a responsibility for each office to take a look in each state to take a look at it to
see what they can bring to this. And as I said earlier, I'll say it again, We're going to make mistakes, and I mentioned that over and over, but it's not going to be mistakes for lack of trying to do the right thing to help support the families at the end of the day that are missing individuals.
Let's stop here for a break. We'll be back in a moment.
So today I'm gonna go through the list of names that Tamara Bear comes out was given from the FBI of possible accomplices to Rico Wallace's like human trafficking ring. So I'm going to go through their social media and see if there's any overlap between that. All right, the first name is Christen and that's it. Abby Best lay O n g B A R E r I k I trixy t r A x I A z I A w O Tina Peru m o I n Brook, Bell, Odessa Rakati Osiha Sutton Okay m O k A y l E s TuS br Stacy Gibbons Medicine. Oh mellow,
big day. That's my guy that I looked at, Demon d Sean Heyan wall I don't know what the last name is cho. You know, it takes a long time to put together these documents, Like I'm making a spreadsheet of all the profiles and their links and any identifiable information, and it takes a while to do that, but it's
worth it. It's worth it, And I'm taking screenshots and I'm linking the screenshots to the spreadsheet, and yeah, it takes a while to do all this stuff, but I generally think, you know, it does pay off to do that, So that's why I'm doing it. I think that's John Green. Hello. Hold on kay Day. He hasn't posted in a while, so I'm wondering if he's incarcerated for the robbery slash assault in Great Falls. So that's what I wanted to see if we can look up Okay to see if
he's incarcerated. It was in a news article in September that police responded to a robbery in Great Falls on the sixteen hundred block Third Avenue, Romelo. Big Day was eventually arrested for a costing a female in a parking lot and attempting to steal her phone. Approximately one hour prior to the robbery, big Day was also involved in a disturbance at the Zip Trip. Big Day was charged with misdemeanor assault in the Zip Trip disturbance. So I don't know if he is incarcerated for that right now
or not. But when I was looking at incarcerated peoples, a couple of months ago or maybe a month ago. I looked for Big Day like how it is on the ID, and I didn't find anybody. But I did a Big Day with no space, and I found a bunch, but he wasn't one of them. But this is his Montana Department of Corrections photo identification, so I would imagine, you know, and it's got his idea number on there and everything.
I'm looking at a jail roster Okay or Shasta County.
Which Great Falls is in Okay, And.
Based on this document, he's still in.
Custody on the charges that has theft and then assault, right, And I think it's worth noting too that just because somebody's on this list, like Tamra Bear comes out said the FBI said this was Rico's circle, right, like the people that worked for him. I think it's worth noting too that just because somebody's on this list doesn't mean they were knowingly doing anything wrong. You know, they could have just thought like these were his girls, even though do you know what I mean? Like I just don't.
I just I want to make it clear that just because we're looking at Tazia's profile doesn't mean she's done anything wrong, right, yep. So this Tasia lady lives in San Jose. Now, yeah, did you notice.
That I was saying she's in Cali?
Now?
I know, but didn't we talk about San Jose specifically as like a place.
Traffic.
Yeah, on the circuit. I'm still blocked. God damn it. Are you getting some kind of vibe.
From her something?
No, I mean she looks I'm not getting a vibe from her. It's just that she's on the list. She's friends with two of the people on the list, like she's the bridge between the two right now?
Do you want her each ocular?
No? Absolutely not. It's more of I'd rather learn a little bit more information before reaching out to her. I don't want to play her hand. I mean, I'm willing to hear your side. I just don't think it's good. I did think it's too soon.
We don't have time.
That's true.
That's my story.
That's where I'm going. We don't have time, and we know this girl somehow, the connection between these two guys.
We don't even have to tell her, hey, your name's on the list.
We just say, hey, you know, we were looking into being what do you how do you say you got to.
Her you don't you just say, hey, did you know a guy named Momelo big Day from Fontana?
And see what she said.
I think this girl might be key Tasia. Then again maybe not, you know, I mean, but why is she on this list?
On the list, we found a profile. We found her connected to somebody that knew.
No, she knows Ramelo. She's on his friend's list, yes.
But then if you go to her profile, she's friends with Tommy.
She's friends with Tommy, which is also on the list. As we continue to dig further, all the names on the list seemed to keep coming back to Ramelo Big Day.
But while we were digging and combing through the social media, we continue to communicate with Shakaia's mom, Tamra, and Tamar told us something that she just learned purely by chance.
If you remember, we had heard that Shakaia was last seen getting into a red truck near tumbil Reed One Race Center the day she disappeared. The story was never collaborated by Yellowstone County PD. But if it's true, then it could be a very important lead. And Tamra just heard something that could help us clarify Shakaia's last few hours before she just period. Are you there?
Yeah, I'm gonna run and grab you quick.
Danna.
So good to hear from you.
And it's good to hear from you. How you been I've been hanging in there.
I ended up running into this girl.
Oh yeah.
Her name was Latsha, and then so we started talking and then I was crying, and she goes, what's wrong?
Are you okay?
And I said, well on that thing, I said blue and I said, its almost my baby. It's almost Chikaia Blue's birthday. And she's like, I know Chkaia Blue. I so you do and she said yeah. She said, I remember riding bike Chiltern. She said, so we used to go to Tumblewee and she said, okay.
So I'm gonna back up a little bit.
In Asia long Night was one of Chikaia's childhood friends. It's crazy because because so okay, so get this. She said that Asia introduced her to the sky. They came up here to Fort Barnot and so she said, Neja introduced her to this guy.
His name was Nick.
She said, blind out Nick's last time. Okay, So get this, Sianna. He drives a red truck with the camper. No, I'm not even lying yet, shop with the camper and that's that's yep, nick, yep, yep, yep.
Oh wow, So I don't don't.
I didn't even know what.
To do with all this information because I might as you want to, little girl, I don't even know if you know it, but you gave him my most solid lead, my passage.
He's surprised to sever.
Yeah, with this new information, we contacted our Montana private investigator, Mike Toss.
If we know his full name, I can look him up and see if he comes up.
On my database.
It's a very common name. It's Aaron Peterson, and he lives in California, but.
He lived in Montana.
He did Aaron Peterson.
Yeah, I will. I will look up on Aaron Peterson and Billings, all right, and see what pops up. I do Billings, Montana. It'll pop up a lot of them. But then I'll look for one now that says of the California address.
Also, I would I would think he's in his twenties, right, Yeah.
I'll give it a shot. There are probably a million of them, but you never know.
Yeah, Yeah, it would be good to hear from him and get the story straight from him.
What happened.
So do we know what the Tumbleweet address is?
We can get it. Five oh five North twenty fourth five.
Oh five, No, twenty fourth pull out. You got an address? I got a guy, so he would he would have hear he has his mailing address.
So Aaron James Peterson, he's.
Where he is, that he's in Missoula, which is where I am.
I'm gonna flag this and send this to both of you right now.
That's great, Mike.
In talking with Shakaia's family, we found out about a person by the name of Aaron who, based on what we've heard, sounds like he may have been the last person to see Shakaya before she disappeared back in July of twenty eighteen, so it'd be kind of important to talk to him. We've seen some text messages between Aaron and Shakaia's sister, him talking about knowing the one person that she was hanging around who may have been grooming her.
So when Mike originally ran a report on Aaron Peterson, there were a bunch, but he was able to identify the specific one based on using the Tumbleweed address. When Mike ran a report on him, he came up with a current address for a person. Same person, Aaron, same last name, living in the Missoula era, Missoula, Montana, which is not far from Billings. I am actually looking up that address just to verify. So it's always good when you run these reports. Sometimes it gives you good information.
Sometimes it does it. So I'm taking the address and I'm going to whitepages dot com and I'm just doing a reverse address look up. So I put in that address, the city, the state, and absolutely nothing so it shows nothing there, doesn't show anybody who lives there or anything like that, which is not good. When I go on go maps, it looks like it's a large multi unit property. There's like four buildings on there, but each unit has
its own address. It's not like one two three four Main Street unit A one two three four Mains, so each one has an address. So maybe if he's still living in there and we can't get a hold of him, maybe we can have Mike the PI go to Missoula, go to the address we have and see if Aaron's still there, and see if he's still willing to talk to us, if he's willing to talk to us and share information on Chicaia.
It's Mike. Well, I'm driving sousa, no problem.
How are you?
Cold?
Good but glad to be moving.
So today you were traveling from what would be considered West Montana over the Billings and on your way you were going to pass through a city called Missoula. And in our research on Chicaia, we had found out about a person by the name of Aaron who supposedly is one of the last people all Shakaia before she went missing. So today you were going to stop by there on your way to Billings to see if maybe Aaron was there, to see if we could introduce ourselves and get him
to come on the podcast and talk with us. So how to go today?
Well, not well, I guess not good. I went there and no one answered.
There wasn't any vehicles in the driveway.
Let's stop here for another quick break. While we searched for Aaron in Montana, we recently got some news about Jared's case.
We thought that Jared's ex wife, Shanna moved out of Florida, and that seemed odd, so we asked our Florida based PI, Chris Algado, to try and find out where she moved to. Now that we know we need to tell Kirsten.
So we have an update for you. Some good news, I mean, in you know, so much not good news. We found her current location okay, and verified that it's correct and all that. And we found his current location too, so the ex the ex wife and him and they are not in the same state.
Yeah. So I actually located her myself.
Oh okay too.
Yeah.
I wonder if our you know what, I wonder if our information matches.
Let's find out.
Let's find out, let me get it, let me pull it up here.
I don't joke, I don't mean to joke about this, but this makes me happy that you were able to locate it too. And now we can see if.
You have it's the same, right, Yeah, there's a million dollar house paid in cash bought by White Fan.
LLC yep in Rachel Washington correct, ye in September yep.
And it was transferred. The deed was transferred like September, September right, yeah, okay, yeah, so you have it too.
How did you find it? Jared?
I know for a fact, Jared was helping me with the fun because you know, I had reached out to you guys. I had actually hired another PI. I know a news station had hired a PI and nothing was coming back. But months and months and months ago, when I had heard a rumor that she was moving to Washington, I racked my brain. I'm like, why would she move
to Washington, Like she doesn't have family there? And then I remembered that she had a baker friend, like a fellow baker who she had met at a cookie conference that lived in Washington, and so I said, you know, I want to find this lady's page and just track her to see if anything comes up. Well, she in his baking page had already gone private, so I couldn't see who she was following or who was following her. But a friend of mine I had asked to follow
Shanna so she could see all of her followers. So she sent me the name of each and every baking account, and then I went through all of them until I found the one I was looking for. I looked up this lady's baking business, like her business license, and it's her home address. So then I looked up local sales and the house exactly next order hers is the one.
That shanns and White White Sands LLC is owned. By the parents.
Correct, Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, and we one thing that we don't know is what the hell's White Sands. They've had it for many years, decades, They let it lapse for a couple of years, renew the license on it. We were really trying to dig into that to White Sands, because it's just it's a strange purchase, right, Yeah, that would be interesting.
And it's also interesting because like they buy all of their houses in LLC. So the one that they purchased here at Jack's Beach was like Arabian Nights LLC. So it's a whole other Yeah, like they have a lot of LLC's, right.
That's how rich people protect their and.
I have no knowledge of that. I don't know how that works. You know.
I had to explain that if like there was ever a lawsuit and they were.
Held and had to pay and they couldn't have their house taken away because the house sits in the corporation under there name. And it's also a way to you know, kind of hide out and if you didn't want people.
To find you, it helps out a lot too. But yeah, and you know the thing Deanna and I was, well, her parents have her under their thumb right, they on, we'll see and she's living there. They got it. She has to do what they.
Want, right, It's just another sign that they will protect her no matter But.
Yeah, one hundred percent. And I and Mario is in Orlando.
Oh really, Yeah, I didn't know that.
Mario. I'll send you his information that I found. We don't have to, you know, because I don't want to dox them on the air and stuff. But yeah, he's in Orlando.
Why do you Why would he be still in Florida and she on the other side of the US. Do you have any idea why?
Christian?
So they're separated, and Shanna had told her little group of baking friends it was either the day of or the morning after. He is the morning after Jared's murder. She randomly put it in their baking chat that, oh, you know, my husband or my ex husband passed away, and it's just super hard because me and Mario decide they were better office friends and we're going to get divorced. But now I have to like wait till the summer, so there's not too much going on for the kids.
So it's just weird timing that she randomly decided to tell her friends that she and Mario are breaking up, but they're still legally married. So I married.
I looked in all the counties you know, affiliated with them, like the three counties that are affiliated with them, and they haven't filed anything yet, or if they have, hasn't made it public yet. But I am constantly looking.
I appreciate that because I look from time to time too, and yeah, yeah.
Nothing's hit yet, and I've got so our PI is looking to Okay, he he's the one who found the Washington in the White Sands and all that.
That's awesome.
No, he's he's phenomenal.
He is phenomenal to find it, because I would not.
So we met him, actually became friends with him, like personal friends, and we were very impressed with him, and he was impressed with us and whatnot, and so we just developed his friendship and he's just like probably one of the best pis in the United States, probably one of the best.
That's awesome.
Yeah, So yeah, we wanted to give you that information for sure, and asked we wanted to ask you to And I'm sorry, I'm coming at You've just been excited to talk to you for a while now. Ever since you've texted me up like bonding to respond. Does Jared's parents have contact with the twins.
No, so there has been contact recently through Jared's sister, Okay, but to my knowledge, she's the only one that has been able to make contact that. I can't remember exactly what date that was. I think it was before Christmas she was able to FaceTime with them. I didn't I didn't hear much about it. I just heard that she texted Shanna, she hadna responded, and then she was able to FaceTime with the twins. That's all I really know. Okay, So that is the only contact with our side of the family.
That I'm aware of, And I'm assuming Jared's parents would like to be their grandchildren too.
Yeah.
So they even emailed Shannon Attorney back in the summer when Gaylord his dad was here going through cancer treatment, asking can we please see the kids while we're here, like he was down at Mayo Clinic getting treated for cancer, and they just completely they never spawn it, completely ignored them.
Well.
I saw I follow the Justice for Jared's Instagram and TikTok and all that, and I saw the email from the lawyers. I think it was in response to you saying leave me alone.
Or yeah, because yeah, so John, Kirsten of course wants her children to have a relationship with their siblings, you know, and has been in her lawyer respond to Kirsten was just like leave me alone or leave me out of this or something.
I can't remember the verbiage, but it was very weird. So, okay, I was.
Texting Shanna for months and she blocked my phone number. I was emailing her, have never gotten a response. That emailed her criminal offense attorney. He said, this is a family law matter, reach out to her family attorney. When I switched to emailing him, wasn't getting a response, so I started emailing him and Shanna on the same thread. His first response was meant for Shanna, and he said this is like in a summer.
Yeah.
He's like, I don't see a need to respond to this. Your family's been through so much. I just want this to be over for you. And I responded, I was like, she's been through so much. Wow, Like you've got to be kidding me. And all I want is for communication to be opened up between blood siblings. So anyways, then he like didn't respond to me again and then it was just recently, you know, like the last I think
in October November whenever that one was. But he responded back to me and said, please stop emailing me, which I responded and said, until you let me know you're no longer representing her, I will continue to email just for you.
I have to tell you that that's very good for you.
They've kissed me off.
Oh yeah, No, I don't blame you on honey, I don't blame you.
So that brings up the question is how did how does Jared's parents get access to their grandkids?
They do, they don't, and so like just recently this year, there was a law pass the markle Yes because of the markl case. But from my understanding when I was reading it, there has to be a conviction for that to be enacted. So they would have grandparent rights, and so would my parents actually, and it includes step grandparents, so my parents and his parents would have rights to visitation with the kids if and when Shanna is convicted of our crime.
Right, So you're you're aware of the Markal Act and what happened to.
Dan markle Yes. In fact, my brother in law and I talk about that case from time to time because we think it's pretty darn.
Similarity, Kirsten. When I read the timeline for this, I literally could not wait to talk to John. I was like, dude, and I read him the timeline of what, you know, the conversation at dinner that was recorded with the brother and the and I mean I had the chills. I'm like, you know, the keys were in the ignition and how things trickled out very slowly. There are two days after the murder. The prius was pictures of release and I
was like, that's a truck. That's our truck. You know, every every step of the way, it was crazy similar the contentious custody.
Battle, the you know, the wealthy family.
The wealthy family. Yeah, so the you know, wanting to take your kids out of the jurisdiction. But she has she the wife, Wendy or the ex wife I used to say, has never been convicted. Only the Yeah, only the brother and his ex girlfriend or whatever, and Alish and of course the two hitmen, right but yeah, And you know, even in investigating Jared's murder, I have such a hard time thinking that it's just one person, you know, So even the fact that there were two hit men.
You know, like everything was just and you know, they did an ABC special which I'm dying to watch. I need to watch it in September of twenty sixteen on this I don't know if you've seen it, but it was on twenty two. It was on twenty twenty. But it just it just reminds me and so much of Jared's murder.
Yeah, you know, one night, in fact, my brother texted me about the King and I was like, oh, yeah, I know. Then it sent me down the rabbit hole again and I was up to like three am watching YouTube clips of the trials, like everyone's testimonies and stuff. And in the ex Wives testimony, I mean, she was pretty good. She was freaking annoying, like m h the way she I mean, she was an attorney, so you
expect that. But yeah, I was up really late one night watching all of their it took testimony, It took eight years.
Eight years. Yeah, isn't that crazy?
It is crazy. It's like art. It's almost like the system is built to protect criminals, you know, like I get that we want to make sure innocent people aren't put behind bars or of course, you know, given the death sentence. But it's like you can get away with so much, especially as I'm sure we all believe that ex wife remarkle, Kay, she was behind it, and she's still walking around free with her kids. Absolutely, it's insane.
Yeah, So yeah, we really wanted to ask you about Jared's parents because I mean I've seen, of course, I've talked to his brother with you and his sister. I've seen, but i haven't seen anything a lot about his parents, and I'm sure that they want to see their grandchildren. That's like, you know, a part.
Of Jared what's sad is like they really want you, but they're almost afraid to fight for it because they are afraid of the power of that family. Like they are genuinely afraid of it. And so if there's not a clear legal way to do it, like an easy hey, this law dictates that we get to see them, they're afraid to try anything else.
Wow, that's scary.
Yeah, that's very scary. So yeah, I guess with.
That being said, Dean and I have been talking to people about this case, about Jared in the case, and we were luckily enough to talk to a forensic that where he's actually a professor.
That teaches it, and we were going over everything with him, like every little piece of thing and the thing. So in court and you're convicting somebody, there's you know, several different types of witnesses. There's an eyewitness, somebody that witnessed the crime that can say I saw personage this. Honestly your two year old daughters too young to go to court, and yeah, there's no other witness, so that just leads
the evidence that's the same. So then we went through all the evidence in different ways they could try to get information or stuff that may be back and it just seems odd that, you know, the tire, the tire
is a big thing. Deanna and I looked into like, can make there's a like a serial number on the tire that I'll tell you where that plant was the tire was manufactured and the date and where it was, and can they track it back to like a store that it was bought at, and looking at things like that, and so we kind of ran every single scenario through. We talked about how they can pull DNA off shellcase scenes and different things, and it just kind of seemed like, ah,
doesn't seem like this is going to go anywhere. And then afterwards, I was thinking, like you, No, the only way we could probably get anything out of this or get from justice is through a confession. And we heard that the x ex husband and her are no longer together. I said, that's interesting.
Yeah, me hopes that she screwed him over so bad.
That's what Reddit thinks that.
Oh really, yeah, what were you saying?
You think that she screwed him over so bad that way?
No, I'm hoping she did. That she screwed him over so bad in this separation because one of his army buddies wives. So his friend's wife actually reached out to me on Instagram and said that, And I don't know if this is true or not, but last she heard, Mario was living in a trailer and just doesn't have a lot going for him, like he did not have his own money, like he was claiming disability from the military, which she claims is fraud, and that he tried to
get her husband to also commit that fraud. But aside from that, he doesn't really have much going for him. So I'm like, if he goes from loving this extravagant lifestyle, brand new Testlove, brand new trucks, brand new, you know, like yeah, everything's paid for. Vacations are paid for. He could play video games all day long, which is what the kid said he did, and then he goes to living in a trailer. I would hope he's pretty pissed about it, especially if he did her bidding and that's
where it got him. Well, so I hope.
So. Yeah, Well, Mario did spend quite a bit of time playing video games, and he would stream and I have his game info and gosh, yeah he spent I mean listen, if he was my husband, I wouldn't divorce him to do you know what I mean?
Yeah?
The amount, the amount, Yeah, the amount of time he spent on that game was like like maybe a junior high boy might during summer break. Do you know what I mean? It's bad.
Wait wait, I want to go back. So a wife of woman's military friends reached out to you and kind of gave me some update on him, So you have an end, so you know, somebody knows where he's at and what he's up to.
I don't know. I don't know if they currently do. But she had said that her husband had gone to lunch with Mario shortly after this all went down, And this wife had been sharing what I had posted, like, hey, we're looking for this truck. Hey this is my husband, Like we need answers. She had been sharing that her own social media, and according to her, at this lunch Mario told him, like, you need to get your wife
to stop posting that. Why she posting that? Like we don't want to bring eyes to this, That's what she said. What like, that's a huge red flag, hopefully to anybody.
Did you tell the police that I did?
Yeah?
Okay, good.
So, I mean there's kind of two scenarios where the ex husband either he was aware of it, part of it, or he has absolutely no idea what happened, right, Yeah. If he has no idea what happened and now he's separated from her and she sees what she did to her first husband, wouldn't he be scared. I'd be scared. Yeah, looking over my shoulder, unless you know, you know.
But if he was.
Part of it, right, then he knows something and they're going through a divorce, he's going to use as his leverage against her.
I did a street view of the new address in Orlando. It doesn't look like a trailer park. It looks like kind of nice condos. So I got the impression that here's what I listen, this is just me spitball. What if he knows that something went down, whether he was involved or not, but he knows right, And what if it's the family that's actually responsible and they are paying his way? If I mean I.
Could see that too, Yeah, my gut. Knowing who Mario is and watching them like he reacted like I saw him the next day. There's no way he was unaware of every movie.
Really, absolutely no.
Way, no how was he acting?
So I had asked Shanna the night up very late, I texted her after I knew that the detectives had gone over to her house to inform her. I asked, said, can I please be there when the kids are informed? One they deserve to have someone who actually loved their dad present, and two so does Jared. Jared deserves to have someone who loved him to be present when his kids are told that he was murdered.
Oh my gosh.
Thankfully she said yes, but I did not want to go by myself. I had some lunches that night, so I took my dad with me early the next morning and we went over to their house. Shanna and Mario met us in the driveway and basically said, we are not to say anything beside comforting the children. They will be the ones doing the talking. So like we were told basically like, don't say anything. So I was like, what, I agreed. I'm like, at least I'm here, I can
see the kids. So we went in and Sharon told them, and so we were at the table. So we're sitting down, Shanna and myself, the kids, and my dad. Mario was off to the side with his arms folded, leaning against their couch, just watching. And when the kids started sobbing after being told about this, I held one of them, and Shanna held one of them. I was crying, my dad was crying, the kids were crying. Mario was emotionless, didn't even attempt to comfort anybody, just stood there watching
the entire time. And then they came actually to my house the day after, I believe so Friday, the day after that. Because they had said Abby wanted to bring some things for her sisters. They didn't tell me that it was going to be Mario and her parents also there, and the whole time he was like bragging about how good his dog is. My dog was there He's like, oh yeah, well, my dog. It was like it was this weird. He was trying to one up every like his behavior was so cold, and he hated Jared like
he bleed shit hated Jared. So there's absolutely no doubt in my mind that he knew, or more like, he was not unaware. No no chance. So I tell you guys what he had posted on his Instagram stories shortly after Jared died. So I wasn't following him because it made my stomach turn. But I, like I said, I use friends to find things for me. He went on my camping trip with some I believe military buddies of his and and one of these Instagram stories, it's a video.
He's taking a video of a lone tire on the ground and they're all laughing and then it changes to something else. Excuse me, I'm not kidding.
Did you tell the colle.
And I I should it you're kidding me, I'm not. I think I can actually go find the screen recording that someone sent me, and I'm like, all right, could be a coincidence. I think they were going to a car show, But.
That to me is not a tasteless It's even if they were at a car.
It's very least, it's tasteless because he knows exactly what.
Yeah, that tire is in every newspaper. So you you mentioned just it's I found something like that was really weird. The night Jared was murdered, Shelley posted pictures of their trip to Hawaii. All right, that's weird.
Yeah, so that's really weird.
On those pictures, you can run them through a piece of software to tell you the dayton time they were posted, because I want to know what time she posted these pictures, and she posted them at twenty two hundred. All right, So when you said that you called Shanna or you found out Shannon NW. Do you know about what time that.
Was Eastern time? I think it was close to I know.
I know that night was horrific, and it was it.
Was late, so don't let me see if I can scroll it is late late, like after eleven pm late?
Okay, yeah, okay, yeah, So I texted her at twelve and eight am on Thursday seventeen, Okay, Thursday, so it was super early Thursday morning.
I hadn't gone to bed.
Yet, so ten pm here is one am? No one am there, right, Because I'm in the West Coast, So I mean, that's listen, if your ex husband is murdered, the father of your children, me, I'd be like, oh my god, I gotta call my mom, you know, like, yeah, I need to talk to somebody who loves me. Right. Yeah, did Shelley know that Jared was murdered when she posted these pictures? Because the blog post is like, you know, the perfect family. You know, you know he is right,
the perfect family. Look at my beautiful daughter and her husband, and the pictures of them two together are very much in love, you know. So if they if they were planning on getting divorced, you certainly can't tell from these photos. Yeah, but yeah, no, she posted them the night he was murdered, the night like, yeah, I'll send you the info if you want it. I mean, I don't know if it's I don't know if it Listen, my my my goal. I don't think I'm going to solve this murder, you
know what i mean. But if we can give anything, one little piece of evidence, you know what I mean, Like one little thing can break it wright open, right, So anything we find, anything we find, I mean, obviously I'd love to solve this but it's just it's just something that I don't I just don't know.
Speaking of that, have the Has there been any updates with the belief as far as you know or can.
Share with us, Not that I can share, okay, but there has been progressed. I think you'll be hearing something soon.
More on that next time.
True Crimes is executive produced by Stephanie Leidecker, Deanna Thompson, Courtney Armstrong, Jeff Shane, Andrew Arnaut, and me John Green. Additional producing by Connor Powell and Gabe Castile, Editing by Jeff Ti Music by vanikor Music.
True Crimes is a production of iHeart Radio and Katie Studios. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, please visit the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts wherever you listen to your favorite shows.